Donald C. Collins
e-mail collinsd1@sfusd.edu
website www.donaldcollins.org.
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Donald C. Collins e-mail collinsd1@sfusd.edu website www.donaldcollins.org.
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ABOUT THIS SITE
This site has information on legal and business issues affecting amateur sports, and issues affecting sports officials and officials' associations. This information is set out in over 60 articles written by Donald C. Collins. This site also has a comprehensive sportsmanship index.
Click on your area of interest on the menu bar on the left
For the latest information, see "What's New" on this page
WHAT'S NEW!
If you're an official and you're moving to a new state, you need a quick way to reach your new state's Officials' Association. Visit the Officials Page and click on "Links to National and State Officials' Organizations"
Baseball and Softball season are coming up. If you're worried about your legal liability toward spectators who are hit by foul balls in baseball or softball, read Williams v. Richland Sch. Dist., No. 28982-6-III (Washington State Court of Appeals, June 7, 2011).
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Helpers Make Things Worse In Mashpee, MA. When two players started fighting in a Mashpee, MA JV boys' basketball game, other players, coaches, and parents all decided that they just had to run in and help. This turned a normal fight into a scrum. Apparently, something happened in the scrum and Mashpee police are reportedly investigating and trying to get video. The moral of all this. If you're a spectator, stay in the stands. You may think you're helping, but you're just making things worse. If you're a player, don't join the fight. You may think you're helping, but you're just making things worse. In other words, don't turn a two person fight into a mob scene. See Mashee Police Probe Basketball Game Fight, Cape Cod Times, January 13, 2012; and Police Further Investigating Basketball Brawl, WHDH-TV report on MSNBC, January 13, 2012.
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Premont School District Cuts Sports To Save Grades? The Superintendent of the Premont (Texas) School District just cut sports from the end of this basketball season to the start of the 2012-13 basketball season. The Superintendent says that he's cutting because cutting sports will improve academic performance. However, he gave the real reason when he said that cutting sports will save his District $150,000. Now, I'd be willing to wager that athletes perform better in school than non-athletes in the Premont District. Studies have shown that at the high school level, athletes do better than the general populace. I'd also be willing to wager that the Superintendent doesn't much care about his spring sports, and is gambling that somebody will come up with the money to bring back sports just in time for the fall when he can save his football team. Of course, this budget cut appears to be so ham-handed that the Superintendent may not be around to see whether sports is saved. The public outcry may lead to the Superintendent being the one who needs saving. In either case, the Superintendent needs to cut the hypocrisy. A person shouldn't dress his budget cuts up as academic progress. See Texas District Cancels Sports In Hopes Of Improving Grades, Fox News, January 21, 2012; Premont ISD Cancels Sports To Save Money, Focus On Academics In Effort To Stay Open by Rhiannon Meyers, Corpus Christi Caller, January 18, 2012.
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Recent Bad Acts: for more see the Bad Acts page.
Charleston, SC - January 9, 2012 - High School Hoops Fans Attack Tebowers. South Carolina's West Ashley High School's spectators sent a loud and violent message to their rivals from Wando High after Wando's 20 point basketball win in January: No Tebowing Allowed! Reportedly, the West Ashley fans felt that the mass Tebowing (a celebratory prayer gesture popularized by Denver Broncos' quarterback Tim Tebow) by the Wando fans was more of a taunt than a religious gesture so some of the West Ashley spectators jumped their Tebowing rivals. Two Wando fans were severely injured. Now, in truth, Tebowing may have had nothing to do with all of this. The Tebowing gesture consists of nothing more than kneeling in a brief prayer like pose, and such a gesture wouldn't raise the ire of any rational set of human beings. It may just be that the West Ashley fans simply were predisposed to beat up on the Wando fans. It was a rivalry game after all. I note that the Charleston Post and Courier reports that West Ashley fans have beaten up Wando fans before. The Post and Courier also notes that despite their prayerful pose, the Wando fans can give back as good as they got. Maybe this is a rivalry game that either needs a whole lot more crowd control or no crowd at all - just play the game in front of an empty house. For details, see 2 Wando Students Beaten At Game by Andrew Knapp, Charleston Post and Courier, January 14, 2012.
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Fans Get Violent At Maryland's Friendly H.S. Maryland's Gazette.Net reports that an unruly spectator got into an altercation with a police officer who was removing him from a gym. The spectator reportedly, "assaulted the officer, causing the officer to fall down the bleachers." This led other officers to intervene. It also led to a crowd of students gathering around. The Gazette reports that some of the students were angry, and refused to disperse. This resulted in pepper spray being deployed and a number of students being arrested. See Lessons-Learned Meeting Tonight At Friendly High Hopes To Move Past Fight That Prompted Arrests, Pepper Spray by Mimi Liu, The Maryland Gazette.net, January 10, 2012.
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Rivals Feud Over Appropriate Way To Honor Coach. Tragedies often bring folks together. Here, it drove two schools apart. After their coach's death, New York’s Nazareth High School’s girls’ basketball team decided that the best way to honor him was to play their regularly scheduled game on Thursday, January 5, 2012. Their opponents from Bishop Ford High decided that playing was disrespectful, and then gave Nazareth a lecture on the appropriate way to honor the deceased coach. According to New York’s Fox TV, Bishop Ford’s president told Nazareth, "The gentleman isn't even buried yet. The day that we put more importance on any sort of a game before life and death is a day that we should stop being educators." Needless to say, the folks from Nazareth weren’t too keen on being lectured on how to honor their own coach. Oh the moral rectiude. Usually, a death brings people together. This one has driven them apart. I must say that there are times when the people who didn’t suffer the loss of their coach need to keep their opinions to themselves. While one may have firm opinions about propriety, it’s just flat out bad form to tell other people how to grieve. If this is how these schools get along off the court, I’d hate to see them on it. See Coach's Death Sparks Fight Between Schools, Fox-TV, New, York, January 5, 2012; and Nazareth, Bishop Ford Disagree When To Play After Coach's Death by Joseph Staszewski, New York Post, January 5, 2012. FOLLOW UP - THINGS GET WORSE AS SELF RIGHTEOUS SCHOOLS KEEP TELLING NAZARETH HOW TO GRIEVE. As of Jan. 6, 2012, Christ the King, another Catholic school, has refused to play Nazareth. Nazareth wants catharsis. Their opponents prefer self righteousness. Now, Coach Apache Paschall's family has stated that they're not pleased. You see, they, too, want Nazareth to play to honor the late coach and for the needed emotional release. See Late Coach's Family Angry; Teams Refuse To Play Nazareth by Marc Raimondi and Joseph Staszewski, New York Post, January 6, 2012. Coach Paschall's mom puts it best. The Post quotes her as saying, "We spoke to everyone [the players] at the hospital ... They said they wanted to play. If anyone should be do any type of canceling, it should be coming from us. [The game] would have been a tribute to Apache.” The self righteous, over officious schools that refused to play this game have caused more pain and grief for the family and players than they'll ever realize. Can you be a poor sport if no game is played? Yes. Bishop Ford and Christ The King have proven so.
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This website focuses heavily on bad acts in sports, but every now and then we remind our readers that wherever you find high stakes and a need to win you can find cheating. When you combine that with racial issues, poor media coverage, and, yes, some cheating, you’ve got a scandal. In the Atlanta Public School system, test scores soared, some irregularities in testing were found, the local media misstated the degree of testing irregularities, but test scores did drop the year after the irregularities were found. It’s a school scandal, but it sounds just like a sports scandal. Nobody is covered in glory on this one. See Cheating Scandal Haunts Atlanta School Chief by Shaila Dewan, New York Times, August 7, 2010.
Latest Administrative Information
Sandusky and
Bernie Fine move over. Can we add Ivan Pravilov's name to the short list
of worst sex abusers in youth sports? Well, we can if the many
allegations against him are true. Who's Ivan, you ask? Well, Ivan is
the former head coach of the Ukranian U18 and U20 hockey national teams. He’s an
internationally prominent youth coach who has coached several NHL players.
Hockey players are tough guys, right? Well, maybe so, but Ivan had access to
them when they were young boys. They weren’t so tough then. Maxim Starchenko is
one of Ivan’s former players. He played his college hockey in the US, and
recently published a book alleging that Pravilov sexually abused his players.
Well, Maxim didn’t make it to the NHL so this could be sour grapes you say.
Maybe, but we know that Ivan was just arrested in January, 2012 for allegedly
fondling a 14 year old hockey player in Philadelphia.
If you think Ivan’s case is unique, think again. Prominent Canadian youth coach
Graham James was convicted in December, 2011 of abusing youth hockey players.
Two of his victims went on to have lengthy NHL careers. One of them, Theo Fleury,
was prominent enough to be recognizable to the casual hockey fan.
If it can happen to
these youth hockey players, it can happen to your kids. See
Ukranian Hockey Coach Ivan Pravilov Charged By Federal Prosecutors With Sexual
Abuse of Teens At Youth Hockey Camps by Michael O'Keefe, New York Daily
News, January 20, 2012; After
Pravilov's Arrest On Sex-Assault Charges, Montco Rink Gets Lots of Attention
by Rick O'Brien, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 21, 2012.
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Focus on Safety Hits N.Y. Middle School Cheer Squad. You've seen middle school cheer squads. They stand on the sideline and use the same cheers that you've heard for the last 30 years, and then at halftime they'll do one big cheer and maybe do a pyramid at the local middle school. I guarantee you that a mat is seldom used, and nobody thinks anything of it. Well, a New York middle school tried to do things right. They used two mats for cheer practice. However, on occasion they'd only roll out one. When a student got injured on one of the days they used one mat, the student sued because the school had breached its standard of care -even though that school's standard of care was a lot higher than most middle school cheer squads. In the past, this type of suit would have been dismissed on the grounds of assumption of risk or under the contact sports exception (a polite legal way of saying that injuries occur in sports - don't clog up the courts suing over them). Now, there's so much focus on concussions, and improving athlete safety that when the local school district moved to dismiss the suit, the New York Supreme Court refused to dismiss and sent the case to trial; it's a brand new day. See See Ditta v. Nesaquake Middle Sch., Slip Opinion, No. 10-10230 (N.Y. Supreme Court, October 20, 2011). Coaches and parents should take note that athletes may know that there are inherent risks in a game, but if a coach takes actions that increase the inherent risk by not providing the expected safety equipment, the coach and school could be liable.
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Coach Calls Black Kid ‘Future Welfare Recipient’. And this is the man who’s leading our kids. Derek Howard, the head basketball coach at Kansas City’s Winnetonka High School, called African-American student Marcus Williams, Jr., a future welfare recipient. This would be an incredibly inane thing to say to a student under virtually any circumstance, but one could see (if not defend) an adult having some contextual reason for it. For example, an angry coach might be warning a kid not to become a future welfare recipient or a coach could claim that he used a motivational technique that backfired. But, not this coach. He just saw a kid whom he didn’t particularly care for, and gratuitously made the comment. Coach Howard even said the comment on video when Williams asked him if he’d care to repeat the comment while Williams recorded it. The coach’s exact quote, “Future welfare recipient who? Students that don’t get good grades.” Well, I guess one could bend over backwards and say that the coach used a poor technique to try to warn Williams to get better grades. But, the facts get in the way of that. Williams wasn’t on the basketball team. He wasn’t in class; nor was he supposed to be in class. Howard wasn’t his counselor, friend, or advisor. There simply was no relationship that could give rise to the comment other than an older, white man using Williams as a personification of what he thought was wrong with younger, black kids. The most benign thing one can say for Howard is that he thought that being a teacher gave him the authority to be an amateur sociologist. Doesn’t fly. This one just stinks, and the scary thing is that this man coaches our kids (or at least he did as he probably committed career suicide here). See Bullying High School Coach Busted, KSDK TV Channel 5, St. Louis, MO, November 15, 2011.
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Premont School District Cuts Sports To Save Grades? The Superintendent of the Premont (Texas) School District just cut sports from the end of this basketball season to the start of the 2012-13 basketball season. The Superintendent says that he's cutting because cutting sports will improve academic performance. However, he gave the real reason when he said that cutting sports will save his District $150,000. Now, I'd be willing to wager that athletes perform better in school than non-athletes in the Premont District. Studies have shown that at the high school level, athletes do better than the general populace. I'd also be willing to wager that the Superintendent doesn't much care about his spring sports, and is gambling that somebody will come up with the money to bring back sports just in time for the fall when he can save his football team. Of course, this budget cut appears to be so ham-handed that the Superintendent may not be around to see whether sports is saved. The public outcry may lead to the Superintendent being the one who needs saving. In either case, the Superintendent needs to cut the hypocrisy. A person shouldn't dress his budget cuts up as academic progress. See Texas District Cancels Sports In Hopes Of Improving Grades, Fox News, January 21, 2012; Premont ISD Cancels Sports To Save Money, Focus On Academics In Effort To Stay Open by Rhiannon Meyers, Corpus Christi Caller, January 18, 2012.
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TITLE IX UPDATE
Female Football Coach A Winner! A year ago, Coolidge High in Washington, D.C., hired the nation's only female head varsity football coach. This generated a lot of news. See D.C. High School To Hire First Female Head Varsity Football Coach by Stephen Spielwak, MaxPreps.com, March 10, 2010. Ultimately, though, a coach has to produce and Natalie Randolph has produced. In just her second season, she took her team to a championship game. See Natalie Randolph Has Won Over Coolidge High's Players By Taking Them To Turkey Bowl and Focusing On Their Futures by James Wagner, Washington Post, November 23, 2011.
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Feds Investigate Over 100 Washington State Schools For Title IX Violations. If you're a high school administrator, it's time to take stock. Are you in compliance with Title IX? If not, your time could be running out. See Feds To Investigate Title IX Compliance by Jim Camden, Seattle Times, June 11, 2011.
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Collins discusses steroids on City Visions Radio.
2008 - NFHS Updates The Case For High School Activities. Sports and co-curricular activities develop better students and only costs one to three percent of a school's budget.
Academic/Recruiting Information
Educators: Thinking about cutting sports. You may want to think again. Education Next's Contributing Editor June Kronholz notes, "There's not a straight line between the crochet club and the Ivy League. But a growing body of research says there is a link between afterschool activities and graduating from high school, going to college, and becoming a responsible citizen." Click here for Academic Value of Non-Academics by June Kronholz, Education Next, Winter 2012, Vol. 12, No. 1. Kronholz sees value not only in sports, but in a wide array of extracurricular activities. She also refers to the concept of "grit", that quality of perseverance that you get from battling through adversity in athletics or in the school band. Athletes - and band members and actors - don't quit. They can't - unless they want to become ex-athletes, ex-band members, and former actors. Of course, lay people intuitively know about grit, and even refer to it informally as "sticking to it" or "battling through it." Well, lay people are correct. Kronholz cites University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Dukworth, who literally gives "grit scores" to recent graduates applying for their first teaching jobs. These grit scores factor in college activities such as athletics. The scores get higher for achievements such as Team MVP awards. According to Kronholz, Duckworth has observed that the applicants with the highest grit scores, "turned out to be the best teachers, based on the academic gains of their students. As an added bonus, the 'grittiest' scorers also were more likely to stay in their jobs rather than quit midyear." So, educators should keep sports for the students, but also for the future teachers. Sports - and other extracurriculars - make winners.
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For more detailed information see the Academic and Recruting Issues Page and see the Making The Case For High School Sports Page
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA), and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) team up to produce video: The Role of The Principal In Interscholastic Athletics. Click here to download.
For complete administrative information see the administration page.
Latest Steroid Information - Click here for the steroids page
IHSA Board Votes To Keep Steroid Testing Alive in Illinois - First Two Violations In 2010. See Illinois To Keep Testing High School Athletes For Steroids by Michael Popke, Athletic Business, August 8, 2011. Illinois has run its program since 2008. They've tested 1,758 students and had two violations, both in the 2010-11 school year. I estimate that Illinois is spending $200 per test, which would mean that Illinois has spent $351,600 on its program. In a tough economy, it will be tough for Illinois to continue its program. Everyone will agree that the deterrent effect is valuable, and that the message is important. The problem is that there have only been two positives and there's no way to prove how many people would be caught without the program. Eventually, Illinois, Texas and New Jersey will all be asked whether there's a more efficient way to get the anti-steroid message out. They will either make a compelling case for continued testing, go to random testing at championships (which will substantially reduce costs), or go to a California style system with lots of education and required student anti-steroid forms.
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Want the latest steroid info without having to weed through all the steroid sites? See
Science Daily - This is a science publication so you'll have to enter "Steroids" in the search bar. One of the problems with sites such as Steroid.com and isteroids.com is that they're geared to people who want to know about using steroids. Sometimes such sites can be off-putting as they immerse one in the ugly world of steroid users. Science Daily is pure science. It's not always exciting, but it's extremely credible.
HEALTH
Chicago, IL - January 7, 2012 - When All Else Fails, Make Sure You Have Good Insurance. The Chicago Sun Times's Phil Kadner notes that mere medical insurance isn't enough. Some of the more severe athletic injuries are only covered by catastrophic injury coverage. Few youth athletes have this insurance, and few places mandate it. See Catastrophic Health Coverage Needed For Student Athletes by Phil Kadner, Chicago Sun Times, January 7, 2012.
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University of North Carolina professor Kevin Guskiewicz shows how modern researchers can work with coaches to fight concussions. Sensors in helmets, constant monitoring, and working on tackling technique where player data shows too many head impacts can make the game safer - and it won Professor Guskiewicz a MacArthur genius grant. See Concussion Researcher on Cutting Edge by Erik Brady, USA Today, November 21, 2011.
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Latest Sportsmanship Information
What's High School Sports All About? Click here for a video on the Tikiqag School in Alaska. A school with only 60 students that is so isolated that it has to fly to its games.
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Andover Cross Country Runner Carries Wounded Competitor To Help, KARE - TV, Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, September 23, 2011. There are times when winning isn't the most important thing. Cross Country runner Josh Ripley of Andover High realized this, and carried an injured competitor a half mile back to the starting line after his opponent suffered a cut that ultimately required 20 stitches.
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Forbes Magazine Sports Blogger Bob Cook makes a rather uncompelling argument that crazed youth sports parents are actually engaging in a rational economic response to the pressures inherent in youth sports. Oh, Cook goes out of his way to say he's not justifying nutty youth sports parents. Rather, he contends that once a parent concludes that sports is the way out, that conclusion logically leads to a host of unsavory behavior. Sounds like Cook is trying to apply economics where it doesn't apply. Anybody who works in youth sports can tell you that nutty parents go nutty even when they're so rich that their kid doesn't need a scholarship. They go nuts in 3rd grade basketball games where no score is kept, and even if there was the kids are too small to score anyway. They go nuts when they've made no investment in their kid's sports development and the kid is playing for one of the worst teams in town. Sounds like Cook needs to get out and see some games, and put away the economic textbooks. Just because you write for Forbes doesn't mean you have to try to apply economics to everything. Cook's work is some of the worst intellectual work on sports I've seen in a long time, which is too bad because he's generally a pretty sharp guy. Anyway, don't take my word for it. See for yourself by reading, Irrational Parents Are A Rational Economic Response To Youth Sports: The Bob Cook Your Kid's Not Going Pro Blog, June 22, 2011, Forbes.com.
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Visit the sportsmanship page for more information.
Latest Officiating Information
If you're an official and you're moving to a new state, you need a quick way to reach your new state's Officials' Association. Links to All 50 States Officials' Association Are Available on the Officials Page at the Links Bookmark.
MA - December 3, 2011 - Controversy Ensues As Go-Ahead Touchdown Called Back Due To Celebration: High School Administrators Refuse To Overturn Controversial Call. Massachusett's Cathedral High School had their go-ahead touchdown called back when their quarterback raised his arm to celebrate. This touched off a national controversy, and an appeal to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA). The MIAA couldn't - and didn't - reverse the call. How could they? It's an officials' judgment call that occurred with six minutes left in the game. We saw a similar problem in November where some New Mexico football officials allegedly missed a call, and a court was asked to intervene. The court ruled that it is not the role of courts to overturn officials' judgment calls. In Massachusetts, it is not the role of administrators to do so either. To quote the New Mexico court, “To agree with the plaintiffs that the courts can serve in that role would set a very bad precedent for high school teams, YAFL teams, little league, AYSO ... Any kind of scholastic sporting team would say if you disagree with the call of a ref or umpire or some other official, that you don’t need to worry about it; you don’t need to live with the decision; that it is up to a court, ultimately, to decide that call, and that’s not the role of the Court.” The MIAA got it right. The call must stand. Cathedral must lose. See Controversial High School Football Call To Stand, WCVB TV (Boston), December 8, 2011. To get a sense of the scope of coverage, see how the story was covered as far away as Ohio where the Cleveland News-Herald ran a column by Bob Frantz: NFL Egomaniacs Are To Blame For High School Official's Big Blunder by Bob Frantz, Cleveland News-Herald, December 7, 2011. For pure local anger, see the Boston Mayor's comments in Mayor Slams MIAA As Frustrated Athletes Who Ruined Super Bowl by Marie Szaniszlo, Boston Herald, December 7, 2011.
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Umpire Accused of Paying Teens For Sex, reported by Navideh Forghani, ABC TV, Phoenix, AZ., September 26, 2011. Edward Lee Hartley, the softball official who stands accused, should be a case study in sleaze and the limits of our ability to detect it. First, Hartley was an Arizona high school softball official. All Arizona sports officials must pass a criminal background check. Hartley passed even though ABC has discovered that he has a criminal history, including "sexual assault, sexual misconduct and rape... [and] at least six prior sex crimes violations." Hartley shows us the limits of background checks. There are different levels of such checks, and at some levels you can miss crimes in other jurisdictions, and even some older criminal convictions. Hartley also shows us the limits of reporting. ABC reports on Hartley's criminal history but fails to tell us whether Hartley's criminal history includes arrests or convictions. A curious reader may wonder how a person with such an extensive criminal history is out walking the streets; they won't get their answer from ABC. Finally, Hartley's story is an illustration in criminal comeuppance. ABC reports that Hartley's victims were a 13 and a 14 year old girl. According to ABC, Hartley offered them $400 for sex. The enterprising children accepted Hartley's offer, but ABC reports that they "called police after they realized the money Hartley gave them was counterfeit." Oddly, Hartley doesn't appear to have been umpiring when he committed this crime so it is a bit odd to see the headlines reporting on him as an umpire. Most people don't think of high school umpiring as a part-time vocation, and would tend to classify most umpires by their full-time occupation. For example, someone may be a school teacher who umpires or a doctor who referees basketball. For Hartley to be classified as an umpire may be a bit of bad luck for the officiating industry in that it indicates that he has done nothing else in life that merits mentioning. Anyway, enough on Hartley. You can read the ABC story for more.
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Assaults Against Officials: We Always hear about it, but how often does it really happen and how wide-spread a problem is it? Visit the Officials Information page for two statistical surveys and the NASO Special Report.
Latest Collins Articles In Print Now.
Collins In Print in January: The latest publication covers child abuse in youth sports. See Child Abuse The Dark Underbelly of Our Youth Sports Culture. Click here for the unedited Collins original, and click here for the momsteam.com on-line version. Also, Collins is in the January It's Official (published by the National Association of Sports Officials). Get It's official and see Your Safety Responsibility Begins Early, January, 2012, page N6 (with Alan Goldberger). This article comes from a question asked at the 2011 NASO Summit regarding how the jewelry rule applies during play and earlier. Collins's quote, "It may not seem to many people that it's a major deal because it's pre-game. But when something happens later on, it's a big deal ... You will be asked ... at length and in many depositions, interrogatories etc..., and you won't be very happy if you're constantly saying, 'No, I didn't follow the rule.'"
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FEATURED QUOTES AND APPEARANCES
Keep Your Bylaws Up-To-Date, NASO-On Board, August 2010, page 4 (National Association of Sports Officials).
Insights Into The NASO Board Room, It’s Official: Monthly Newsletter of The National Association of Sports Officials, June 2010, page N7.
Heart of A Champion is a character education program that uses research based tools geared to reach today's "sight and sound" generation. Click here for a sample educator's guide.